Annotated Bibliography

Annotated List of Works Cited
Ball, Arnetha E. "Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students." English

Journal (1996): 27-36. Jstor. National Council of Teachers of English. 20 Mar. 2009 .

Through his empirical case study consisting of a series of assignments, Ball provides several oral and written samples from African American students and analyzes each one by highlighting key features of African American Vernacular English used in the samples. He goes on to explain why each feature is important and how it either helped the student elaborate their point in ways they would be unable to do in Standard English or how their AAVE features hurt the student by making them seem unintelligent. By comparing oral and written work, Ball discovers that the more successful students in his study were able to comfortably move between two communities of discourse.

Nembhard, Judith P. "A Perspective on Teaching Black Dialect Speaking Students to

Write Standard English." The Journal of Negro Education 52 (1983): 75-82.

This article argues that teachers need to stop taking sympathy on black students and constructively point out their errors in Standard English. To do this, Nembhard suggests teachers employ either a principle of eradication, in which Black Dialect is supplanted by Standard English or a system of bidialectism, in which students retain their home languages but expand their linguistic range by learning Standard English. Teachers also need to focus on teaching students how to write instead of focusing on the grammaticism of writing. By gaining a greater understanding of the prewriting, writing, rewriting process of writing as well as how to be more clear, convincing, and original in their writing, students will eventually pick up on grammar of Standard English and will be stronger overall.

Ramsey, P. A. "Teaching the Teachers to Teach Black-Dialect Writers." College

English 41 (1979): 197-201. Jstor. National Council of Teachers of English. 20 Mar. 2009 .

Ramsey states that most African American students want to learn Standard English because they value it more than their own dialects. Unfortunately there is no “fool proof methods for teaching black dialect writers” (198). Like Nembhard, Ramsey stresses the importance of teaching any student the basics of how to write, not just black dialect speakers the grammar of how to write. Compared to the inability to successfully formulate a thesis and organize a paper around that thesis, minor grammatical irregularities are minor. To make writing aracial, Ramsey suggests that the attitudes of white students needs to change before the writing styles of black students can improve.

Whitney, Jessica. "Five Easy Pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the

Classroom." English Journal 94 (2005): 64-69. Jstor. National Council of Teachers of English. 25 Mar. 2009 .

Here, Whitney discusses the hesitance and intimidation she faced as a white, non-AAVE speaking teacher. However Whitney is not the only one struggling to find ways to successfully incorporate AAVE into the classrooms. To ease this frustration, Whitney developed five steps to help teachers teach students as effectively and painlessly as possible. The first step is for educators to educate themselves to recognize not only common features of AAVE, but also to recognize that AAVE is just a different dialect. Understanding a student’s home language helps ensure a broader academic success upon the student. The second step is to incorporate multidialectism into the classroom so that students can explore and appreciate different forms of dialect. Creating a learning environment rich in oral language by having students practice a variety of discussions, brainstorming, storytelling, and debates is the third way to bring AAVE into the classrooms. The fourth and possibly most important step is to have students practice code-switching as a way to internalize appropriate times to display certain dialects. Similarly and lastly, Whitney describes the importance of letting students write like real writers by exploring appropriate ways to write to appropriate audiences.